I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten to mention that I’m doing a podcast! On math! (Are you shocked?)
In our latest episode, we talk about the sex lives of lizards, how to be maximally unbeatable at rock-paper-scissors, and while I think we did okay at explaining Quantum Game Theory, we fail to save the Enterprise.
In my continued efforts to champion the creative job application as modern American literary form, here is a bit of my response to “Tell us why the idea of social innovation/enterprise has you all excited now!”
I will freely admit that I’ve done my share of sneering at social innovation entrepreneurs. They can be chipper and self-congratulatory, and they waste valuable characters using your given name in their alarmingly earnest DMs. However, we are moving out of the cheap talk phase of social networks. Within about 7 hours of the Haitian earthquake, I read on Twitter of a number allowing you to text $10 to the Red Cross. As I did so, I realized I was doing it, partly because it was right, but mostly because it was easy. I would use the same device to send the donation as I had used to read it, so there was no context switching; there was no need to fact-check because the information was from someone I’ve learned to trust. Our tools are getting better at convincing us to do the right thing, and making it easier to do it.
Watch for Evoke. It’s going to be the real deal. In the meantime, send 10 bucks to the Red Cross by texting “haiti” to 90999.
I loved this and wanted to post it somewhere. From The Public Domain
Paying attention to the last ten years means we need to realize that nonproprietary, distributed production is not the poor relation of traditional proprietary, hierarchically organized production. This is no hippy lovefest. It is the business method on which IBM has staked billions of dollars; the method of cultural production that generates much of the information each of us uses every day. It is just as deserving of respect and the solicitude of policy makers as the more familiar methods pursued by the film studios and proprietary software companies. Losses due to sharing that failed because of artificially erected legal barriers are every bit as real as losses that come about because of illicit copying. Yet our attention goes entirely to the latter.